·TeslaTesla lawyers ask judge to throw out $243 million verdict, saying mention of Elon Musk misled the juryBy Bernard CondonBy The Associated PressBy Bernard CondonBy The Associated Press Tesla CEO Elon Musk.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesThe car company run by Elon Musk asked a federal court Friday to dismiss massive damages awarded to victims of a deadly crash, arguing that their lawyers had misled the jury by imperly bringing up the billionaire during the trial.
The filing in Miami federal court seeks to overturn the $243 million award after a 22-year old student out stargazing was flung through the air to her death by a runaway Tesla equipped with Autopilot features that Musk had talked up for years.
A jury earlier this month found that the speeding Tesla driver was mostly to blame but Tesla was also responsible because of faulty nology.
The case has been watched closely by carmakers racing to develop fully self-driving features.
They fear it could portend massive liability risks should future juries reviewing accidents decide carmakers are also to blame even when drivers act recklessly.
“If the verdict is allowed to stand, it will chill innovation, harm road safety and invite future juries to punish manufacturers who bring new safety features to market,” the company said in the filing.
Tesla is also arguing that opposing lawyers “led the jury astray” by introducing “highly prejudicial but irrelevant evidence” suggesting Tesla had hid or lost and data that, after it was dug up by the opposing side, helped recreate what went wrong moments before the crash.
Tesla had said that it made a mistake in not offering up the evidence earlier and did not do that deliberately.
Musk had taken a big chance by allowing the case to go to trial at a pivotal moment for his electric car company.
He is trying to convince Americans that his self-driving nology, imved since the 2019 crash, can be trusted amid ambitious plans to roll out driverless Tesla robotaxis around the country.
Many similar cases against Tesla had either been dismissed or been settled by the company before going to trial.
The plaintiff lawyers revealed in a court filing last week that they had told Tesla that they were willing to accept $60 million to settle. But Tesla refused.
In the end, the jury decided on compensatory and punitive damages for the family of the killed Naibel Benavides and her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo, amounting to four times that amount.
The filing by Tesla on Friday asked the judge to grant it a new trial, throw out the award or at least vastly reduce it.
The jury held that Tesla bore significant responsibility because its nology failed even though the driver had admitted he was wrong to be distracted by his cellphone.
The driver had settled separately with the Benavides family and Angulo. Tesla has said the nology had nothing to do with the crash.
The plaintiff lawyers also said Tesla’s decision to even use the term Autopilot showed it was willing to mislead people and take big risks with their s because the system only helps drivers with lane changes, slowing a car and other tasks, falling far short of driving the car itself.
They said other automakers use terms “driver assist” and “copilot” to make sure drivers don’t rely too much on the nology.
European regulators have complained Tesla word choices for its driver assistance software, and have raised questions whether it misleads drivers, too.
Musk had told investors last year that it expected to get apval from those regulators for a more advanced version of Autopilot in March, but it’s still waiting for the go-ahead.
That advanced driver assistance feature, which Musk calls Full-Self Driving, has also drawn scrutiny in U.S. for possibly misleading drivers.
An administrative judge in California is hearing a case in which the state motor vehicles department is seeking to withdraw Tesla’s license to sell cars partly because of what it says are misleading names.
“I trusted the nology too much,” the driver in the Florida crash, George McGee, said in his testimony.
“I believed that if the car saw something in front of it, it would vide a warning and apply the brakes.” The lead defense lawyer in the Miami case, Joel Smith, countered that Tesla warns drivers that they must keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel yet McGee chose not to do that while he looked for a dropped cellphone, adding to the danger by speeding.
Tesla stock fell nearly 3.5% Friday, after a drop a day earlier when sales figures out of Europe showed car buyers there are still avoiding Tesla.
The company had been hit with boycotts and test earlier his year after Musk embraced extreme right wing politicians there.
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